A Story of SHEDIM CHATUL
by savannavansmutsmut
Summary: Historian Bella Swan moves to a city in the original thirteen colonies in hopes of discovering some of the history firsthand, and boy does she… Will she be able to survive Shedim Chatul? Will Edward be able to save her? This was originally posted for the Halloween count down last year on another profile. PULLED AND PUBLISHED!


**This story has been pulled for publication. It can be found on Amazon as our Holiday Romance Collection under the name Rose Von Barnsley if you would like to read the entire tale. Check it out for the rest of the story!**

 **TITLE: SHEDIM CHATUL**

 **Author: Savannavansmutsmut**

 **Beta: Dollybigmomma**

 **Rated: M**

 **Historian Bella Swan moves to a city in the original thirteen colonies in hopes of discovering some of the history firsthand, and boy does she…**

 **SHEDIM CHATUL**

 **PART 1**

"Welcome to the area, Miss Swan!"

I smiled and waved at the lady behind the counter of the corner bakery, shoving a cookie into my mouth, as I exited the shop. I had popped in to buy some bread, striking up a conversation, and she had given me a mixed bag as a complementary welcome gift to the neighborhood. I happily munched on them all the way home.

I was excited to move to a new town, have a new apartment and a new start. I wasn't leaving behind much in my old place, just an old apartment with very little charm, and an ex-boyfriend with even less. He was intimidated by my intelligence, but then I was pretty sure a rock could have outsmarted him.

My new apartment wasn't actually all that new. The downtown area was old, and the building had been rebuilt a few times. The area had a lot of history, being part of the original thirteen colonies. I had studied the history of the town and planned on digging further into the history of my building, or at least the buildings that had previously been built on the foundation of it. I loved a good ghost story and knew the city would be ripe with them.

The street I lived on was quiet. The homes and buildings were all much older. It was only my building that stuck out like a sore thumb. I would have loved to have gotten an apartment in one of the older buildings, but they were nearly impossible to get. Someone had to die for them to open up. I had put my name on several waiting lists. I wasn't surprised that this building had the shortest one, or that it opened up the fastest. It really was kind of quirky. I asked what had happened to the previous tenant, sickly hoping for an opportunity to see a ghost, but it turned out that she was still alive; she had just been committed to a mental institution.

"She had issues. They just seemed to get worse by the day. She took most of it out on the guy across the street. Aged him years, the boy was only thirty when he moved in, he looks sixty now," my apartment manager, Mr. Banner, said shaking his head and frowning. "She claimed he did all sorts of crazy stuff. I heard her screaming at him, but when I looked out my window, I saw him in his own apartment. He was watching TV and folding laundry. When she started screaming for him to get his hands off her, I thought it was another Mike, so I opened the door to help her, and she startled back to reality. She looked around, asking where he went, yelling at me to get him; that he must've left when I opened the door. I swear, Ms. Swan, there was no one in that apartment besides me, her and that silly cat," he pointed to the stray black cat that was rubbing against my legs.

"Is it her cat?"

"I think so, but I saw it in Mike's window several times, too. Look, the guy has some sort of stigma on him since she went nuts. She accused him of horrible things, but I swear, Ms. Swan, the man never crossed the street, and there's no way he could do what she accused him of. He's a war veteran. He lost a leg, and the other is crippled pretty badly. He has a prosthetic, but he still has to use a crutch or cane. There's no way he could chase after her. I did see her staring out her window at him for hours at a time. I think it went to her head. Don't believe what the neighbors tell you. Do me a favor and be nice to him."

"Yeah, sure."

I ran into Mike at the grocery store. I knew it was him, because I had seen him through my window. As soon as he had noticed me looking, he had shut the drapes. I didn't blame him. The last girl who had looked into his window had gone crazy. When he saw me standing in the cereal aisle, he turn on his prosthetic and started to hobble away. "Hey, Mike?" I rushed up to him, not letting him get away. "You're Mike, right, my neighbor across the street?"

He eyed me nervously. "Please, just leave me alone."

"I just wanted to say hi. Mr. Banner told me about the girl who went crazy and…"

"I had nothing to do with that. I was cleared of all the…"

"I know, he told me you were, he said he knew you were in your apartment, and that I shouldn't let the others try and scare me off."

"That's nice of him, but I'd rather just be left alone. I don't want any trouble, so if you could just..." He made to move past me, and I stepped out of his way. I wondered if he was afraid I'd go nuts. Maybe he suspected that it was the apartment that drove people crazy. I'd have to keep a journal to document any changes in behavior I might experience. Surprisingly, I was kind of hoping I'd go a little crazy.

After a month, there were no changes in my behavior. I was still boring old me, but now I had a cat, sort of. It was the cat that had stayed with the girl who had been committed, and I noticed it did go stay at Mike's apartment frequently. He kept the drapes closed, but that didn't stop the cat from stretching out on his windowsill.

I realized that I was out of luck. My apartment wasn't haunted or cursed. The girl who had lived in it before me had legitimately been crazy. I wanted to make friends with Mike, and maybe get the neighborhood to warm up to him again, but he wanted nothing to do with me.

Three months later, I was shocked when his body was rolled out on a stretcher in a body bag. He had supposedly died in his sleep. I wondered if he would linger in his apartment in the afterlife. He would be a cantankerous ghost and seemed like someone who would haunt. I wondered if anyone would go to his service, and so I snuck into the cemetery. He had been a veteran and was given a hero's send off, but other than the military, there was no one else there. I looked at the little placard that was reserving the space for his tombstone. I frowned when I saw the age. He had only been thirty-three. He looked to be nearly seventy when I had met him. I thought for sure it was some sort of misprint.

I decided to do some digging into Mike, aka Michael Newton, and found that he had been a decorated war veteran who had been honorably discharged, and he really had been only thirty-three. Mr. Banner said the mess the old tenant had caused for him had aged Mike severely, but I was sick just thinking about how horrible life had to have been for him to end up the way he had. I had a new hatred for the woman who had lived in my apartment previously. She really had ruined that poor man's life.

After Mr. Newton's death, the cat stayed at my house, not venturing across the street anymore, but watching out the window. I wondered if he was waiting for Mike to come home, so he could go stay with him. I named the cat after him, because no one had ever told me its name. I thought since it was Mike's cat, that his memory should be preserved somehow, so the cat's name was Michael Newton Junior, but I called him MJ. I didn't want Mr. Banner to think I had gone nuts, when I started calling the cat Mike. He'd probably get the straight jacket people down here quicker than I could blink.

Mike's death got to me more than I realized. More than once, I found myself sitting at the archive table zoning out, when I'd come across a war-related article. I tried to shake it off. I had moved with the intent of drinking up the area history and finding some ghosts of some sort, but after losing Mike and watching MJ stare out the window pining for him, I felt horrible.

With renewed effort, I focused on my job and pushed on with life. It was just me and MJ, and I wondered if he would be the first of many cats I would gather on my road to becoming a cat lady.

When I arrived home, I heard the light scrape of MJ's paws on the door. He used to do that when he'd decide to go see Mike. I opened the door, thinking he'd just wanted to see me, but he shot outside. I set my bag down inside and decided to follow MJ, curious about where he'd gone. He hadn't crossed the street in weeks, and that was exactly where he was headed...


End file.
